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Timothy Abbott
Timothy (Tim) Abbott is the current leader of the Bio Subteam of Cornell ChemE Car. He joined the team in January 2013 as a member of the Bio Subteam and is on track to graduate in 2015 with a BS in Chemical Engineering and Minors in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. Background In his tenure at Cornell, Tim has been involved in a number of activities on campus. Starting his sophomore year, he joined the Lucks Lab for RNA engineering. During his three years in the lab, he has worked on four different projects, including studying RNA frameshift mutants in influenza RNA, the interactions of influenza RNA-protein complexes, and developing a method to simultaneously measure the structure and function of RNA in the cell. Tim presented the data from the last project in a Rapid-Fire Oral Session and at the Bioengineering poster session at the 2014 AIChE Annual Meeting and has been submitted for publication in PNAS. His latest project is to study the structure-function relationships of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats) guide RNAs with applications in engineering effective tools for gene silencing. Tim is also a member of Cornell's iGEM (international genetically engineered machines) team (CUGEM), which seeks to use synthetic biology to solve global problems. He has worked on two projects with the team: Organofoam (2013) and Lead it Go (2014). Mushroom packaging, a technology developed by Ecovative Design, uses mushroom root networks, or mycelia, to grow in shaped plastic molds. These mycelia are then heat and pressure treated to sterilize and strengthen the material, resulting in an organic Styrofoam product. However, slime molds and other contaminating species were inhibiting the growth of Ecovative's mushroom mycelia, reducing the rate of production and integrity of the product. CUGEM was able to genetically modify these mushrooms to produce antifungals that would inhibit the growth of these contaminating species but not itself. For their efforts, they were awarded a gold medal the the Best Human Practices award. Lead it Go was focused on using E. coli to sequester heavy metals (nickel, mercury, lead) from industrially contaminated waste water. Their project included a device containing hollow fiber reactors that would sequester bacteria, but allow water to flow through, allowing water to be purified. The team received a gold medal for their efforts. Tim joined the Bio Subteam on ChemE Car in January of 2013 and learned from Brianna DeRooy ('14) about the team and how the team functions. Under her leadership, he helped research biological methods for powering a car, such as microbial fuel cells, livers, yeast, biodiesel, and even the infamous hamster-powered car. The following year, Jeffrey Li ('15) was the subteam leader. Under his guidance, he researched methods for producing a yeast-powered car and other possible power methods, such as microbial fuel cells. In the spring of 2014, the team shifted focus to biodiesel as it appeared on paper to be a more promising power option. The team then ordered a model airplane engine that can run on biodiesel and established a protocol for synthesizing biodiesel. During the summer of 2014, Tim was an intern for Genentech Inc. There he studied factors that could potentially affect E. coli culture growth and performance. Spring 2013 Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Fall 2014 In Fall 2014, Tim lead the Bio Subteam through initial tests for the biodiesel engine. Initially deemed unsafe, he was able to prove that the biodiesel engine is allowed under competition rules and car testing could continue. The team ran into snags as the engine would not properly run on pure biodiesel. At that time, Alex Gordon joined the team and was instrumental in researching why the engine was not working. We were able to find that, for model airplane engines, biodiesel is not actually combusted and merely serves as a lubricant. Tim found that other ChemE car teams were working with the same type of engine and were experimenting with biodiesel-ethanol mixtures where the ethanol would be the combustible component. Alex found articles where farmers had experimented with and had good results from 50-50 mixtures of biodiesel and ethanol. Tim was also able to find and purchase diesel fuel for model engines, providing a control for their tests. After testing with the store-bought diesel fuel, the engine was still not able to run, making the biodiesel car a very tenuous choice to move forward with. Luckily, Tiffany Lee did a tremendous amount of research on other ways to power a car. She found sources that used urine as well as boiled potatoes to provide enough electrical current to power LEDs. She also had done much more research on microbial fuel cells to see if we could continue down this road to power a car. Spring 2015 External Links https://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2014/webprogram/Paper396946.html https://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2014/webprogram/Paper391949.html http://2013.igem.org/Team:Cornell http://2014.igem.org/Team:Cornell http://www.ecovativedesign.com http://www.gene.com Category:Bio Category:Members Category:Bio Members Category:Spring 2013 Members Category:Fall 2013 Members Category:Spring 2014 Members Category:Fall 2014 Members Category:Spring 2015 Members